"Via this intermediate link"... meaning of message in WMT?

[Rlilly]

Does anyone have an idea what "Via this intermediate link" in the the "links to your site" sections of GWT?

They are showing up for many of our backlinks and these are clean natural and some not so natural HTML links, not links by redirects or some java script.

Could it be a subtle message that Google is not giving any value to those links?

[Robert Charlton]

I'm seeing 14 references here for this message via WebmasterWorld site search...

"via this intermediate link" site:webmasterworld.com

...with various different interpretations.

Here are two semi-recent threads that make interesting observations...

via this intermediate figment of the imagination
http://www.webmasterworld.com/google/4399904.htm [webmasterworld.com]

Google thinks my sites are interlinked but they are NOT
http://www.webmasterworld.com/google/4358356.htm [webmasterworld.com]


Let me just toss in one additional thought... complete conjecture... and ask if the message might also relate to questions implicit in this thread, about why Google might be tracking old redirected domains....

Domain name replaced in SERPS with alias domain name
http://www.webmasterworld.com/google/4327200.htm [webmasterworld.com]

Might Google be tracking intermediates of all sorts... and for various reasons, positive and negative? Eg, redirecting penalized pages, hidden redirects, redirect scripts, etc? Does any of this apply to the "intermediate links" message?

[g1smd]

It's usually when one or other URLs in the chain is a redirect.